Ron Nehring, center, who was elected as chairman of the California Republican Party in last weekend's state convention, answers reporters question during a news conference, Wednesday, Feb. 14, 2007, held in Sacramento, Calif. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli)
Ran on: 06-27-2007

California Republicans, aiming to blunt the effects of a new primary election system, head into their party's state convention this weekend embroiled in civil warfare over how its candidates are endorsed.

Political analysts say the amendments are an end-run around Proposition 14, the ballot measure opposed by both major political parties in the state but approved by voters in June. It allows the top two candidates in a primary election to face each other in the general election, regardless of party.

One proposal - supported by top GOP conservatives including outgoing party Chairman Ron Nehring - allows a few thousand Republican state and local committee members, typically the party's most conservative activists, to endorse one Republican over another in a primary election.

The other, supported by House Majority Whip Rep. Kevin McCarthy of Bakersfield, would automatically give the party's endorsement to incumbent Republicans - while eliminating endorsements in most other open elections.

Debate over the dueling plans comes as the GOP in solidly blue California has been battered, with party registration at 31 percent of state voters, and Democrats holding both U.S. Senate seats, all statewide offices and a majority in both houses of the Legislature.

Unprecedented move

While California Democrats have long endorsed candidates in primary elections, the move is unprecedented in the state GOP.

Jon Fleischman, a vice chairman of the state GOP and publisher of the conservative FlashReport.org, supports the Nehring plan, saying it would protect the party's core function to nominate its own candidates.

He said McCarthy's proposal is nothing more than a vestige of the politics of former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger - a Republican despised by the conservative ranks of his party as a sellout.

"Kevin's agenda is more moderate," Fleischman said, "but what he's done to garner support (is to ensure) if you're an incumbent politician, you are automatically the nominee of the party. I call it the aristocracy plan."

In a letter to GOP convention delegates, Nehring said, "It is important for our party to have a mechanism in place to nominate and advocate for candidates."

But McCarthy - joined by the majority of California's Republican congressional delegation and several state Senate and Assembly legislators - said such a process allows an elite party group to publicly favor one Republican candidate over another.

"This is a basic principle of our party: Voters are better suited to picking our best candidate than small groups," McCarthy said in a letter to party members.

Destructive to party

Brandon Gesicki, a member of the California Republican Party's rules committee, said Nehring's plan "would be completely destructive to our party." Conservative party bosses like Nehring and Fleischman, he said, want to "manipulate and control the process for their own special profit."

"These guys are routinely keeping us in a perpetual minority," Gesicki said. "They profit from that. They don't want us to be a big tent or a majority party. They like it the way it is, but that isn't good for the rest of the state."

San Francisco GOP Chairwoman Harmeet Dhillon, one of 13 county chairs who oppose Nehring's plan, said: "I think this is absolutely about the party elites controlling the nominating process."

'Anti-democratic'

Dhillon said a system in which a few thousand delegates statewide control the endorsement process is "incredibly anti-democratic," adding that "it will crowd more moderate candidates out of the field."

But Celeste Greig, a conservative activist who endorses the Nehring plan, said she is "not the party elite."

Greig, president of the California Republican Assembly, a conservative grassroots organization, added: "I'm not a big donor. I'm just a regular person. I don't call that being an elite, do you?"

Molly Milligan, a senior fellow at the nonpartisan Center for Governmental Studies in Los Angeles and author of its study of Prop. 14, said both sides may be overstating the effects of the measure on GOP voters. The proposition itself isn't likely to produce more moderate candidates - if it does - for three or four election cycles, she said.

And unless the party's endorsement is indicated on the ballot - which it won't be - "it won't make much difference to voters," Milligan said. "A lot of them don't even look at the ballot until they get into the booth."